The Torch

When I scanned the reviews for "The Torch" I was surprised. There seemed to be an equal number of reviews that gave the film a 1 as gave it a 10! The truth is that both extremes are ridiculous... the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Simply put...it cannot earn a 10 with Paulette Goddard pained up like a Mexican and providing a rather over-the-top performance. And, the film certainly isn't a 1, as that should be reserved for movies like "Plan 9 From Outer Space" or "The Room" or "Robot Monster"!

The story is set in the revolutionary period in Mexico---somewhere between 1910 and 1920. Many of these revolutionaries were calling for massive social upheaval...much like the one in Russia during this same time. A revolutionary general (Pedro Armendáriz) arrives in town and starts executing the rich. However, he's so taken with María Dolores Penafiel (Goddard) that he spares her rich father. The bulk of the rest of the film is the General pursuing him and the girl resisting him.

The worst part about the film, clearly, is Paulette Goddard. I must admit that I've never been a fan of her work, but here she is much worse than usual due to her being miscast as well as her occasional over-acting. She has little subtlety in her performance and in the beginning she looks addled when she makes goofy eyes at the camera (and I have no idea why). Apart from that, she often screams and is rarely subtle. And, finally, she's supposed to be a young Mexican girl...not a 40 year-old white lady painted brown. The plot isn't bad when it doesn't center on her....but too bad most of the film does. Incidentally, Armendáriz is actually pretty good...and he was a very good actor in both American and Mexican films. Overall, a rather dull film that never really pays off to watch...and repeats the refrain from "La Cucaracha" too often to be taken seriously.

El Nace del Amor mixes romance and melodrama with historic and military drama set in a late 19th century Mexican town. The story centers on a few very strongly realized characters - Maria Dolores (Paulette Godard) Jose Juan (Pedro Armendariz), Father Sierra (Gilbert Roland) and Dr. Stanley (Walter Reed). Maria Dolores is a headstrong and lovely young upper middle class woman who is engaged to an American doctor (Reed) who has settled in the town. Father Sierra is a community-leading priest and Jose Juan is a revolutionary general who brings unsolicited agrarian reform to the town and falls in love with Maria Dolores.

Jose Juan (who is remarkably well-played by Armendariz) and Maria Dolores are the most dramatic and unpredictable characters of the lot. Father Sierra, who has known the General since they were both young, makes it clear that Jose Juan is a principled man, but his bloody revolution and generally aggressive and angry demeanor do not seem to sit well with this representation. Maria Dolores is intelligent, intuitive, passionate and virtuous, but also inexperienced and a bit naive. Although the revolutionary occupation of the town and the calamities that beset the place at the time comprise most of the threads of the nicely woven plot, the romance between Dr. Stanley, Maria and Jose Juan is the fundamental story in El Nace.

Goddard's performance is not one of her best, but she does an admirable job of playing a woman who was probably about half her age (Godard was 48 when the film was released).

Filmed in Mexico and shot in English with Spanish subtitles, veteran Mexican actor Emilio Fernandez's directing and cinematography are surprisingly superb. Each shot is very nicely composed and the camera usually makes up for occasional weaknesses in the acting and the script. There are a few problems with the editing which do not really detract from the value of the story. The few war scenes, though they do not approach the blood and guts realism of today's military adventures, are startlingly vivid and a bit scary.

Despite my praises, the film has quite a few tedious moments which are important from the perspective of character development, but which do not stand up to the test of time.

Interesting from a cultural and historical perspective, and as a well-made low budget early independent, El Nace del Amor is recommended for film buffs and students of cinematography. While it is hardly a classic, it is a good story well told.

While a distinguished film-maker in his native country, director Fernandez is perhaps best-known today for playing the heinous General Mapache in Sam Peckinpah's seminal THE WILD BUNCH (1969); for the record, later he was also the one to make the titular request in the same director's BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974). This genuinely oddball Western, then, was a Hollywood remake of Fernandez's own previous critical success ENAMORADA (1946) – proving once again that the tradition in Tinseltown of looking for hot properties (when it comes to both subjects and their creators) in foreign lands is indeed a long-standing one; unfortunately, the end result here begins promisingly enough but gradually peters out. Anyway, apart from the director, Pedro Armendariz also reprises his earlier role of the Bandit General (which is how the film was known in the U.K.), while associate producer Paulette Goddard unwisely chose herself for the role of the leading lady. Ostensibly the town beauty, Goddard is far too old for the part but, sporting a completely misconceived schoolgirl look and playing it utterly over-the-top, her performance is forever threatening to bring the whole film crumbling down with it! Luckily, Fernandez gives the whole a remarkably visual texture (straight from the very opening scene in a glass factory) that lends it a presciently "Spaghetti Western" feel and the intermittent, awkward instances of goofy humor (including Goddard sending Armendariz literally flying off his horse into the air with a firecracker!) only serve to reinforce this impression. The third star featured here is Gilbert Roland but his role of the taciturn town priest (and old school friend of Armendariz's) is clearly subservient to the main couple who, inevitably, form a tenuous triangle with Goddard's dullish fiancée. The Mill Creek DVD I watched was a typically substandard edition that failed to do justice to celebrated cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa's (also from the original Mexican production) lyrical shots, and the hiss-laden soundtrack was similarly hard to sit through.

Paulette Goddard had a hand in the production of this because she liked the (far superior) source film "Enamorada" from four years earlier. Pedro Armendáriz reprises his role as the conquering general "José Juan" who arrives in a town determined to secure it's riches for his libertarian cause. He also has an old friend here, in the form of the priest "Sierra" (Gilbert Roland) and quickly takes a shine to the feisty "Maria Dolores" (PG) who is already promised to the local, rather decent, "Dr. Stanley" (Walter Reed). Regrettably, the production here is pretty basic, there is way too much dialogue and little enough action for the usually charismatic Armendáriz to get his teeth into. Goddard looks the part, but doesn't feature anything like enough to keep this from meandering along waiting for the plague and/or the government troops to come and force a few hands. It's only eighty minutes long but there really isn't enough story to pad it out that long and it struggles to sustain much interest - even with a population of two-faced townsfolk and a little personal tragedy thrown in too. It's poor, this, sorry.

Revolutionaries led by Pedro Armendariz, blow into a Mexican town and turn it upside down. Disregarding the advice of old friend and priest Gilbert Roland, he falls in love with Paulette Goddard, the daughter of a wealthy man slated for execution. He pursues her, despite the fact that the sassy senorita hates his guts.

Armendariz delivers a magnetic performance and his character is an interesting one, with the General showing many sides of his multi-faceted personality.

Armendariz's and Roland, as well as the exciting takeover scenes make the first third of the film quite compelling. However, after the General and the girl meet, it all becomes more conventional and sometimes downright silly, with Goddard overacting her part, before turning a bit morbid, as the whole town is stricken with a deadly outbreak of influenza!

Overall, it's a fairly interesting film, competently directed by frequent actor Emilio Fernandez and atmospherically photographed on some excellent Mexican locations.